


bright as the stars are dark

by nonwal



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark Rey, F/M, Unhealthy Relationships, accidental galactic conquest, and also the lack of a Fluff tag, honestly no one is having a good time here but oh god poor Finn, in case you missed it I'd like to point out the Angst tag, like imagine the unholy offspring of ahab and the terminator, sad finn, vague references to tlj but no major spoilers, you've heard of Soft Kylux now get ready for Hard Finnrey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-02 13:52:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13319508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonwal/pseuds/nonwal
Summary: Whoever left her on Jakku is taking too long to come back, so Rey decides to go looking for them. The quickest way to find a needle is to burn the haystack.(In which impatience leads to the Dark side.)





	1. For Want

In another life, maybe she would wait forever.

In another life, maybe she’d be swept away on the winds of circumstance in the middle of all her waiting, maybe she’d meet somebody else, somebody who comes back for her. That’s all she ever wanted. _Come back, come back._

But no one returns for her, tally after tally, and one day she realizes that she’s going to run out of space on the wall before anyone shows up asking around for a Rey. The someone who left her on Jakku is taking too long to come back.

So she decides to go find them. She saves up what she can, bargains for a ship from the scrapyard's boss. She shouldn’t be able to wheedle him out of the trash ship she receives, but she’s determined and...strangely persuasive.

 _(There has been an awakening,_ a figure on a throne says to his puppet. _Have you felt it?)_

She doesn’t have much to take with her. A doll, a helmet, her staff, her tools, the vibroblade she’s never had to use.

“If someone comes for me,” she says before she leaves, “Explain that I’m looking for them.”

Somehow she knows that she’ll never return.

“I’m looking for someone,” she says whereever she goes, and is not surprised when no one offers a helping hand. (Maybe, in another life…)

Occasionally, people ask her to elaborate. “Who? Who are you searching for?”

“They left me behind,” she says. “They’re family. They were planning on coming back but something must have held them up and now I’m going to find them. Tell people that Rey from Jakku was here. Say that I’m looking for them.”

As the weeks drag on, she catches snippets of thought: _you’ve been abandoned, you’re deluding yourself, poor foolish girl._ She knows they are not her doubts. Much like the sudden ability to persuade people, she doesn’t waste time wondering how she can read minds now.

On one moon, she returns to her ship only to find a study in black waiting for her.

“You aren’t Han Solo.”

“I’m Rey. Let me go back to my ship.”

The helmeted figure raises a hand and something invisible grips her. “This is Han Solo’s ship.” He takes an object from his belt, one that becomes a blade of red light.

In another life, maybe he would terrify her. But she’s been toying with people’s minds for a while now, and she recognizes whatever has her in its grasp. She tells it to let go, and it does.

The man in black does not like this. “You have the Force. Who are you?”

“Rey, from Jakku,” she says. “I’m looking for someone. They took too long to come back for me.”

“You need a teacher,” says the masked thing.

“I’m busy,” she replies, and he cannot stop her when she leaves.

 

 

Hypothetically, FN-2187 should not be listening to any of this.

“According to our informant, the map is with a man by the name of Lor San Tekka,” the general says. “On Jakku.”

“That’s the place the girl…”

“What girl?” the general snaps, no time for vague nonsense as per usual.

“Rey from—from nowhere. The girl with the Force. She was looking for someone.”

“Is it possible she’s already obtained the map?”

The notion that the nowhere girl might be looking for _Skywalker_ doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Knight of Ren. The mission is delayed two hours to consult the Supreme Leader. By the time troopers land on Jakku, the map is long gone. In retaliation, or simply because the Knight enjoys wanton destruction, he orders them to make the rest of the settlement gone, too.

Hypothetically, FN-2187 was made for this.

But instead, in the middle of all the fire and blood and death he finds that he can’t make himself pull the trigger. Can’t follow orders, can’t be complicit in this. And that means he has to get out of here but he doesn’t have any way to escape and he can’t fucking breathe and the captain notices that he’s malfunctioning and and and and―

This is the first time of many that FN-2187 is sent to reconditioning.

(Despite his mission having gone flawlessly, the Resistance pilot will have vague nightmares about it for years.)

 

 

The freighter appears at the worst time, when she’s in the middle of attempting to tape her own ship back together. She barely has time to hide, and is found almost immediately.

She was expecting...someone else. Pirates. Not _Han Solo._

(Which means that the figure in black did know what he was talking about. Which in turn means that maybe she should look into the Force thing when she has the chance.)

Solo and his wookie aren’t who she’s looking for, not at all. But between arguing over the technicalities of who her ship really belongs to and showing them the modifications she’s made and talking to a literal _legend..._ she forgets, for a while, that she has somebody to find.

(The rathtar is never adequately explained.)

Her excited reverie is broken by criminal gangs boarding the freighter, seeking out Solo. She wants to help. Really. But this feels a bit like a reminder (from the Force? The universe? The part of her that says she’s taken a wrong step somewhere and needs to turn back?) that she has wasted too much time here.

There’s still someone she must look for. She reclaims her ship while Han Solo is distracted by old mistakes.

On the next planet, old ghosts guide her to a chest with a weapon. It shows her visions of has-beens and could-have-beens, but gives no hints about what to do next. The wizened old thing that recognized her ship and her eyes calls her _dear child_ like she knows who she once was, and warns her not to seek that which lies behind her.

Part of her appreciates the mislaid advice―no one helps her unless she makes them―but mostly she’s just impatient. She’s already determined that what she’s seeking lies ahead.

When red lights streak across the sky she also sees the lights blinking out, five massive voids in quick sucession. Others mill around in confusion, but she _knows._ Five planets. Billions of people with friends and love and joy, and in the crushing moment of their deaths she is nobody. All those people, and she can do nothing to save them.

All those people, and what if one of them had been family?

Blind rage is good, better than focusing on the ache of empty space. She follows her fury across the sky as the stars mourn one of their own. 


	2. Event Horizon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all: Interesting! I wonder what will happen next.  
> me: *laughing nervously as I try to add duplicate 'Angst' tags*

They want to know how FN-2187 survived. They saw the footage from the doomed base. They saw every trooper guarding the oscillator drop with a word and a gesture. They saw him wander down the corridor with a cleaning cart and straight into the nowhere girl.

He may be loopy from reconditioning, but he’s not completely brainless. A good trooper would have shot her. Another round of reconditioning is the best-case scenario for him right now.

“Why didn’t she knock you unconscious like the others?” the captain asks.

“I have no idea.”

“Guess.”

All he knows is that he saw her and instinctively wanted to help her. She’d noticed him staring, stared back.

“Maybe she didn’t care about sanitation?”

It was like looking at a solar eclipse, unable to tell if it was the glow or the dark that filled him with dreadful awe. A solar eclipse does not care about the janitor.

“Why didn’t you attempt to apprehend her?”

FN-2187 knows that it looks like he was working with her. He wasn’t. But he can’t say that the nowhere girl was so obviously an incarnation of the sublime that the very  _ idea  _ of stopping her seemed preposterous.

“She was beautiful,” his mouth says instead, which isn’t any better.

The captain stands still for a long moment, inscrutable behind her mirrored visage, then sends him to the medbay to make sure he isn’t concussed before they recondition him again.

  
  


The near-defeat on the hollow planet convinces her to update her weaponry. She is far more comfortable fighting with a staff, and in the between hours in hyperspace, she refurbishes her old one.

She’s altered its design numerous times over the years―to make it longer, heavier, easier to carry, to add a compartment for a spare set of tools. Adding a lightsaber to one end is the biggest adjustment yet. She has to shorten the staff, recalibrate the balance, change the sling so she won’t accidentally activate the saber and impale herself.

Her weapon adjustment is made all the more crucial now that a trio of black-clad figures haunts her. Whether they’re connected to the man she left bleeding in the snow has yet to be confirmed. They don’t have as strong a grasp of the Force as him, but they hunt in a pack.

“Our master wants to speak to you,” says the first, when they catch up to her on Samovar.

“I’m busy.”

“It is not wise to deny Supreme Leader Snoke,” says the second.

“Leave me alone,” she says, and the third is smart enough not to reply.

They show up on every planet she searches, talking about their master and becoming increasingly agitated every time she refuses to go with them.

When it happens, it happens very quickly. They get too close. Too aggressive, and she lashes out on instinct, the saber end cutting through one of them with hardly any effort. She’s never killed someone before, at least not by her own hand. It feels...it doesn’t feel like she expected.

A new shadow replaces the old, and for a while the trio keeps their distance. She is quicker to strike the next time they forget themselves, and chases off the remaining two before they can so much as retrieve the body. Looting it might give her something to add to her collection, but in the end she decides nothing is worth the possibility of picking up some sort of tracker.

During her search she’s found a variety of Force-related artifacts, though she doesn’t go out of her way for them. There’s a lot of nonsense about dark rituals and a rule of two, passion and anger and pain. There’s also some entirely contradictory literature about serenity and peace and balance, though she comes across that less often. (Almost as if someone else had been gathering up whatever they could on that subject. Maybe, in another life…)

She doesn’t care much about what  _ side _ she’s on, as long as it continues to work. She has no peace and no fear. There is no time for passion. Instead she becomes colder, sharper, more outwardly serene the more her efforts are thwarted. Frustration and fury only calm her, now.

She is very calm. 

  
  


He loses himself sometimes in large swaths, sometimes in bits and pieces.

The things he remembers: FN-2003 raising a bloodied hand, a girl who was also an eclipse, history lessons about the past glories of the Empire, the sky turning red. Evacuating as the ground shuddered beneath him. Bodies on the sand. An order to fire. His finger on the trigger.

The things he knows he’s forgotten: FN-2003 had another name. One of these bottles is for cleaning transparisteel. Someone caused the superweapon to implode. He did something, or didn’t do something, on Jakku.

Things he’s not sure if he forgot or if he never knew in the first place: was the girl from somewhere? Was the safety on?

Things he doesn’t even remember forgetting: ? ? ?

Every time he proves to be an inadequate soldier, the problem is...fixed. The Order has perfected the art of carving away unnecessary bits and replacing them with something useful. They don’t allow him to crumble under the pressure, the gaps always filled with carefully-engineered truths to prevent structural collapse.

Things they teach him that he never truly believes: this is for the good of the galaxy. His commanding officers are infallible. This is what mercy looks like.

Things he will never stop believing: he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He wants to run as far away as possible.

Things he does believe, eventually, even though they don’t really matter: he is replaceable. He is a weapon. His name has always been FN-2187. The First Order is unstoppable. Disobeying orders will result in him getting killed or reconditioned.

Beliefs that do matter: he isn’t able to save anyone.

  
  


The three shadows know better than to physically assault her now. They harass people away from her instead, making it harder to continue her search. Eventually she kills two of them just for getting in her way, and no more trios bother her after that. The remaining two only call out to her from across the street, from the other bank of the river, from the far side of the room. She lets herself believe that because they are being cautious she is safe as well. In reward for her foolishness she sips her drink and watches them fade to a dizzy blur on the other end of the bar.

She still has her belongings when she awakens, with the exception of her staff. Something calls her through twisting corridors to a cavernous room with a throne, occupied by a creature in a frankly hideous robe.

“You didn’t heed my invitations,” the being calls as she approaches down the long hall. He raises a hand, and the Force stills her. For a moment, she thinks she cannot break free.

“I’ve been looking for someone.”

“As have I, for a great deal of time now. But who is it that  _ you _ seek, child?”

“They left me behind,” she says, and steps forward once more. “They never came back for me.”

“To their own detriment. You’ve already proven yourself stronger than my current student. With training, you could be something...spectacular. I cannot let such untapped talent continue to aimlessly wander, one way or the other. You have a choice: perish without ever reaching your full potential, or join m—”

“You keep getting in my way,” she says, and decapitates him with the vibroblade she’s never had to use until now. There’s more resistance than with a lightsaber, and far more blood. She doesn’t mind overmuch.

She finds her staff mangled, the lightsaber end shattered, crystal halves glinting like accusing eyes. She doesn’t require it to destroy everyone in her path while she looks for a shuttle to leave the dismal place.

This incident signals the end of her problem with masked agitators in black. She doesn’t have as much success in other ventures, however.

The trouble with scouring a planet and leaving is that there’s no guarantee her family won’t show up at some later date. She tells people to pass her message along to visitors, and even when they claim to agree, she hears what lies beneath:  _ crazy girl, there’s no point, why would I bother? _

The thought of her quarry arriving someplace she’d already searched, gaining refuge where she’d been denied aid, no one bothering to  _ tell her _ —it’s infuriating. She can’t mind-trick entire planets into obeying her forever. But what’s the point of looking if every town becomes a place to hide as soon as she’s gone?

In the end, the only solution is to eliminate the hiding spots before she leaves.

  
  


“She’s a menace. We should have dealt with her long before she began razing First Order property. The  _ entire mining settlement, _ Ren. Gone in a day, and with the equipment she stole she’ll only cause more damage.”

“Hux.”

“Starkiller was bad enough, but at least that can be blamed on errors from the structural engineering department. But this? This is the kind of pointless mayhem that I expect from  _ you,  _ except you usually stick to destroying my ship.”

“Hux.”

“She’s been going through whole planets like this! It’s as though she’s purposely inflating the repair bill as much as possible. The infrastructure, the life-support systems, anything that could be  _ vaguely _ habitable—”

_ “Hux.” _

“What?”

“I don’t want you to die.” If FN-2187 got along with the other troopers he would be very popular in certain betting circles. 

“That’s new. If you’re so fond of having a bed warmer one would assume you wouldn’t continue  _ strangling it _ in front of subordinates. Though I suppose that would require you to be marginally rational, and we can’t have that.” Very,  _ very _ popular.

“If you get in her way, she’ll destroy you just like Snoke.” Of course, betting and speculation about officers’ personal lives is against the rules.

“Snoke had no strategic sense. He confronted her directly despite having a  _ ludicrous _ amount of firepower at his disposal. We have more than enough resources to surround her and eliminate her from afar.” It’s not worth the risk of getting reconditioned.

“You can point every gun you have at her and it won’t make a difference. She’ll slip past your ships and slit your throat for wasting her time. The only way to stop her is to convince her to join us.” He’s never had the privilege of being a person, but every round of reconditioning leaves him feeling a little less human.

“She doesn’t sound like the sort of person to  _ join _ anything.” Is he allowed to be human, at least?

“Maybe we’ll join her. Prepare my ship,” the new Supreme Leader says, and FN-2187 does not hesitate to obey.


	3. Implacable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imagine a relationship built on love and trust, on stolen smiles and hugs that never last long enough, on shielding each other from the cruelties of the world and knowing that someone’s always got your back.  
> Now imagine one that isn’t.  
> (please heed the updated tags)

Her reprieve from dealing with other Force users ends on a smuggler’s moon so insignificant it doesn’t have an official name. The locals call it Tauros IV.

It’s the one with the red lightsaber, who she hasn’t seen since the hollow planet, now maskless. His surface thoughts are guarded, but the First Order officer accompanying him…

....believes they won’t find her here, has some kind of offer to make. Had wanted to kill her but was convinced that any attempt would be foolish by the one he thinks of simply as—

“Ren. I told you to stop digging around in my head.”

“That wasn’t me.”

She swivels away from the bar of the noodle stand to give them a wave, but makes no effort to get up. She’s not about to let potential conflict distract her from non-rehydrated food. 

They approach, and the redhead holds out a hand. “Rey from Jakku? I’m General Hux of the First—”

“I don’t have time for pleasantries. What do you want and what are you offering?”

The man pauses, curls his lip ever so slightly. “I want you to stop destroying First Order settlements. In return, we will set up a census of all inhabitants and those entering or leaving the planet. You’re looking for someone, correct?”

“You want to aim me at your enemies and and use the promise of protection to attract new subjects. What can you offer that’s actually worth my time?”

“You would have the aid of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren—”

“Not worth my time. I want unrestricted access to your organization’s resources, whenever I need them.”

The redhead purses his lips. She knows what he’s thinking.

“I’m not going to take over your little army. Give me half a dozen troopers and most of the time you’ll forget I even exist.”

  
  


There’s a new presence on the Finalizer, one that hangs around the troopers in watchful silence. Rumor has it that she’s the one who killed all the Knights. FN-2187 doesn’t doubt it, not with how easily she twirls that double-ended lightsaber around. Not with how warily the new Supreme Leader skirts around her. Not with eyes like those.

The first few troopers seem surprised that she selects them, but after a while it’s apparent that she’s looking for the most talented fuckups the Order has to offer. By the time FN-2187—top of his class, social pariah, record holder for number of reconditionings, one mistake away from being decommissioned—is called for an interview, the only surprise is that it took her so long.

Some part of him recognizes her, the one that still says  _ maybe I can run _ and doesn’t want to kill anyone. It’s a part he no longer listens to. Even if he recalls her face from a dream or some memory he’s not supposed to have anymore, it can’t be the same person. He wouldn’t forget someone like  _ that. _

No, his only comparable experience is squinting into a patch of deep space and failing to find a single star in the abyss. Terrible, and yet he keeps looking.

  
  


She looks for stormtroopers who are good at questioning things. It takes a long time to find them. The Order is not interested in soldiers who act like people.

The first success is GH-2300, Crutches for short. She’s been repeatedly reprimanded for disobeying orders she thought were stupid. Threefor talks back and challenges authority figures. FZ-1010, who goes by Tens or Fizz depending on who you ask, was caught collaborating with outsiders to smuggle in contraband. Static keeps hacking the security system to spy on officers she dislikes. 

She doesn’t even have to find Blitz. He’s the overeager sort who apprehends people for being vaguely suspicious and marches up to her claiming that he should be part of her squad.

The last to join the team is FN-2187. He’s terrible at telling lies and excellent at discerning them. She suspects that his ability to read people’s emotions means he’s Force-sensitive, but she doesn’t shuffle around in his head for long enough to determine how much. It’s a mess in there, so mangled that she’s surprised 2187 can function. Reading his mind is...unpleasant.

(Though it isn’t the damage that disconcerts her, but the brilliance of the parts left untouched. The way the very fabric of the Force screams  _ important, _ like he could be the catalyst for something world-changing if he were...someone else. Someone other than a broken shell with a serial number.)

She knows that part of their assignment is to keep an eye on her. They know that they don’t have the power to stop her from doing anything she shouldn’t. It’s an uneasy relationship, but it works. 

There are blunders, early on. Blitz is fatally reckless, and when she gets a replacement she looks for someone with a respectful fear of explosives. Eightee is cautious as he is malicious, and wise enough to only take his cruelty out on the people they question. She’ll have to keep an eye on him, but overall he’s a good addition to the team. The galaxy falls before her, silent and trembling.

There’s only one person foolish enough not to fear her. 2187 seems to find her _ interesting, _ alluring despite her usually being covered in a layer of dust and dried blood. She could ignore it, could report his interest to the Order and hand him over for more brainwashing. 

But instead she finds herself thinking that it’s...convenient. She doesn’t exactly have time to go date someone in between scouring planets. And he  _ is  _ attractive, almost magnetic. It seems inevitable, then, that they come together in a tangle of sheets and stuttered gasps and skin and heat and teeth.

In another life, maybe it would mean something.

  
  


He thinks he knows what a black hole would be like, though he’s never seen one in person. Enthralling. Inexorable. It would draw you close, irresistible and deadly. It would devour every scrap of light it touched and somehow the light would keep reaching for it. And it would have a great deal of gravity, of sadness, for something that does not feel.

These are all hypotheticals, of course, but if anyone is intimate with the subject, it would be him. Weeks have turned into months since the first time FN-2187 fell into bed with his superior, and doesn’t time pass differently near the event horizon? Or perhaps he’s passed that already. That would explain why he can’t seem to act on the churning need to run far, far away from the blood and the death and the cataclysm of a mission that he’s been assigned.

He has a dream, once, that he asks her to come with him. That he tells her  _ this is madness, the person you’re looking for doesn’t even care and I do so please stop doing this to yourself. _ In the dream, she listens, and they run together.

FN-2187 remembers nothing when he wakes. For a moment he imagines fleeing, alone, and never coming back.

(It is a dream about two people they are not.)

  
  


This is a weakness, wanting to wake up next to someone warm and soft. Out of everyone in the entire galaxy, 2187 has the best chance of killing her, because she can dodge cannons and stop blaster bolts but there is nothing to protect her if a familiar nighttime presence grabs a knife once she falls asleep. She doesn’t even read his mind, so it would be up to the whims of the Force to warn her.

(And the Force seems to think there’s something horribly, terribly  _ wrong _ about her.)

She allows herself this one thing because being weak makes her feel like she is still human. It’s a calculated risk, and a small one, because if it ever comes down to fight or flight...well. She doesn’t need to read minds to know that 2187 wants to run.

She figures that if things were different, he could have escaped. One errant stormtrooper is not worth much effort. He could’ve hidden someplace obscure and the First Order would never have bothered looking there.

But the Order follows her now, and so there is nowhere it will not touch. She knows that 2187 understands this, and that is the only reason he returns after each mission. It doesn’t matter. Things are more  _ efficient,  _ now that she’s strong-armed everyone into obeying her. It’s not her fault that it happened this way. If only someone had helped her, had cared, had refused to leave her behind...maybe things wouldn’t be like this. Maybe  _ she  _ wouldn’t—

Some call her Jedi, and more call her Sith. Others say she is one of the old gods, an avenging spirit, the river from that story about the man in the nebula, a demon from the second hell, a tale to scare small children, an incarnation of the Dark, a threat, a myth, a monster. 

When they meet her and ask for her name, she says—

“Rey. No one came back for me.”

—and they are afraid.

  
  


“The scanners have picked up smaller life forms on Crait, but no sentients,” he says, looking at the readout.

“It’s still habitable, though. Someone used to live there,” she responds, and FN-2187 doesn’t bother wondering how she knows that. “Eightee, bring us down towards the northeastern quadrant.” 

Landing on the bleeding planet feels like the end of something, but that isn’t important. They find an old rebel base there, and FN-2187 is too busy dismantling it to think about ghosts. They leave the planet not too long afterwards, and that doesn’t feel like anything at all. 

That rest cycle, he feels soft lips brush against his neck and doesn’t recognize the sensation until it is followed by teeth a moment later. He always feels half a step behind around her, not because he’s slow to react but because she’s always impatient, always moving onwards as the rest of the world tumbles in her wake. 

Hypothetically, this is all he’s ever wanted. He has a mission, a purpose, a ruthless commander who points him at their enemies and invites him to bed most nights. He ignores the part of him that never stopped wanting to run and pulls the trigger when she tells him to.

Hypothetically, FN-2187 was made for this.

  
  


The unmasked man asks, only once, “Have you always known?”

No. She never has.

“About your par—” and it so  _ easy, _ to close off his airway and prevent the rest from spilling from his lips. He does not try to say it again. In another life, maybe— _ maybe— _ it would have been the truth.

But not in this one. She knows her place, here.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(Years pass, and someone arrives at Jakku, asks around for a Rey.  _ I’ve returned for her. Where is she? _

Everyone gives the same reply.  _ Run. Hide. She is looking for you.) _

**Author's Note:**

> [What if Rey got impatient?](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForWantOfANail) [What if Finn didn’t get away?](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DespairEventHorizon) [What if they never saved each other?](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImplacableMan)
> 
>  
> 
> [Come yell at me on Tumblr.](http://nonwal.tumblr.com/)


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